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Mark Strand
'Mark Strand - '''Anneliese Dion-Kindem Mark Strand was born in 1934 on Prince Edward Island, Canada. He began publishing collections of poetry in 1964. Ever since, he has remained a successful contemporary American poet as well as essayist and translator. Over the past four decades, Strand has published 18 poetry collections as well as several prose books. He has received several awards and prizes for his contribution to poetry including the Bobbit, Bollingen, and Edgar Allen Poe Prizes, along with several grants, awards, and endowments. Most notably among them is the Pulitzer Prize he won for the collection entitled ''Blizzard of One in 1998. Currently, Strand serves as a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. Mark Strand’s poetic style includes concrete language and a strong narrative element. Strand’s poems are not typically attentive to meter or rhyme. Though I appreciate metered and rhymed poems, I find great freedom in free verse poetry. When I read Strand’s poems, I notice that the words have more meaning than their placement, and yet Strand’s poems have a complete feeling; everything feels important. I am attracted to his style of poetry because of the narrative quality of his work. I consider Mark Strand’s poetry to be a great combination of flash fiction and classic poetry. Each poem serves as a snapshot of time, a hint of a larger story. The language of his poetry is highly evocative and sentimental. Because Strand’s poems are not metered or rhymed, as a reader I find myself attached to the story in each poem more readily. This is a technique that I strive to emulate when I consider the act of creating a poem. I want to focus on the narrative of the poem and use the words to further emphasize that narrative. I also appreciate Strand’s references to nature in his poetry, though this trend does not dominate his work, it does make a significant appearance. When I write I too feel compelled to include references to the nature that surrounds me, and I believe that using nature in a poem evokes powerful images in a reader. The following poems are excerpts from Strand’s Blizzard of One: Untitled As for the poem The Adorable One slipped in your pocket, Which began, “I think continually about us, the superhuman, how We fly around saying, ‘HI, I’m So-and-So, and who are you?’” It has been years since you bothered to read it. But now In this lavender light under the shade of the pines the time Seems right. The dust of a passion, the dark crumbles of images Down the page are all that remain, And she was beautiful, And the poem, you thought at the time, was equally so. The lavender turns to ash. The clouds disappear. Where Is she now? And where is that boy who stood for hours Outside her house, learning too late that something is always About to happen just at the moment it serves no purpose at all? Old Man Leaves Party It was clear when I left the party That though I was over eighty I still had A beautiful body. The Moon shone down as it will On moments of deep introspection. The wind held its breath. And look, somebody left a mirror leaning against a tree. Making sure that I was alone, I took off my shirt. The flowers of bear grass nodded their moonwashed heads. I took off my pants and the magpies circled the redwoods. Down in the valley the creaking river was flowing once more. How strange that I should stand in the wilds alone with my body. I know what you are thinking. I was like you once. But now With so much before me, so many emerald trees, and Weed-whitened fields, mountains and lakes, how could I not Be only myself, this dream of flesh, from moment to moment? What It Was '' ''I It was impossible to imagine, impossible Not to imagine; the blueness of it, the shadow it cast, Falling downward, filling the dark with the chill of itself, The cold of it falling out of itself, out of whatever idea Of itself it described as it fell; a something, a smallness A dot, a speck, a speck within a speck, an endless depth Of smallness; a song, but less than a song, something drowning Into itself, something going, a flood of sound, but less Than a sound; the last of it, the blank of it, The tender small blank of it filling its echo, and falling, And rising unnoticed, and falling again, and always thus, And always because, and only because, once having been, it was….. II It was the beginning of a chair; It was the gray couch; it was the walls, The garden, the gravel road; it was the way The ruined moonlight fell across her hair. It was that, and it was more. It was the wind that tore At the trees; it was the fuss and clutter of clouds, the shore Littered with stars. It was the hour which seemed to say That if you knew what time it really was, you would not Ask for anything again. It was that. It was certainly that. It was also what never happened- a moment so full That when it went, as it had to, no grief was large enough To contain it. It was the room that appeared unchanged After so many years. It was that. It was the hat She’d forgotten to take, the pen she left on the table. It was the sun on my hand. It was the sun’s heat. It was the way I sat, the way I waited for hours, for days. It was that. Just that. Prompt: In order to emulate Strand’s style, start by imitating his poem. Envision a powerful moment, a snapshot of time, a feeling in an instant and create a poem out of it starting with “IT WAS….” Do not rely on description, but rather imagery.